


all the outs in free

by M_arahuyo



Category: Oxenfree
Genre: Angst, F/F, Mental Instability, Psychological Horror, Psychological Trauma, Slow Burn, the Gay is only secondary here sadly, we have loose ends to tie up my dudes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-18
Updated: 2018-05-12
Packaged: 2019-04-01 11:10:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 10,913
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13997034
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/M_arahuyo/pseuds/M_arahuyo
Summary: They left the island. They don't know they left the island, and don't even know they were ever in it in the first place.They don't know no one just leaves it unscathed.[Follows the time loop-break. Alex never went to Edwards Island. No one ever suffered through that night. Or so they're led to believe.]





	1. hide or seek

**Author's Note:**

> *leisurely unpacking personal effects to squat in this trash ship* 
> 
> i'm taking a break from my other fandom for a bit and wanted to try something different, so here we are. i've got at least half of this (super roughly) drafted up and there'll def be a plot, not jus angsty, spoopy slow burn
> 
> anyway, for this first chapter, im still trying to settle the vibe
> 
> please note that the rating and archive warning are subject to change. tags will be added as this gets updated. be sure to check them with every update to stay safe
> 
> enjoy :')

There is never a countdown to it. It doesn't really start and it doesn't quite end: a never-ending game of hide and seek, always cutting straight to the part where she's running to hide or running to seek.

She never knows what she's hiding from. Never knows what she's seeking. Isn't sure if there's anything to hide from, anything to seek, if there's even a point to why she trudges through grass and gravel and the cold sand of the beach.

Her body does it all the same. It goes through the motions like a hamster on a wheel, trying to run away from the static or towards it.

(It's always so close yet so far. Like it's right there, just at the corner of her eye, an otherworldly glitch that skews a shrub or the trunk of a tree just the tiniest bit. Always gone somehow, magically, conveniently, whenever she whips her head around.)

She sinks her feet into the sand now. Surf pools between her boots and she feels more than hears the whispers. She walks different parts of the island each time but this is a constant, these whispers, the warble of a hundred voices that are too out of sync to be anything beyond grating noise.

Before her, the ocean jumps for the briefest second like a frame cut, yanked, taped wrong on an otherwise seamless film reel. The sky darkens before it bleeds red. Someone is behind her. _Someones_ are behind her and they murmur.

 _leave_. Not **_possible_**

with _us_. **Trapped**. Lost

 ** _too_** _late_. Ours. _You_

you. **_Sleepy time_** _gal_

The ocean jumps again. The sky looks like it's pounding with its own heartbeat. She reaches out. Her hand glitches with the rest of the ocean, the sky, the world, spasming in and out of focus. She feels like the ripples the waves leave on the sand: a little bit of herself taken each time, broken down, grain by grain, in slow, slow whispers until all of her is dragged into the waters. Her fingers close around some invisible shape on the horizon. She can never figure out whether she's found it, or she's been found.

 

 

She shudders awake. She is staring at her hand, wrung in the air, reaching for the ceiling. Her back and neck are damp with sweat and when she breathes, it feels like she's coming up for air. Someone else's hand is wrapped around her wrist.

“You were dreaming again,” Clarissa sees fit to inform her. Her voice is severe but her face is a different kind of pinched. Frightened, almost. Smudged mascara streaks her eyes and she smells faintly of beer.

Alex blinks. Vertigo comes no matter how slowly she sits up. Clarissa doesn't let go of her wrist just yet for whatever reason and she’s thankful, because she tilts and Clarissa’s shoulder steadies her. “Was I…?”

“Talking? Yeah. Won't call it talking, though. Thought you were fighting with someone. On the phone or something.”

Clarissa finally lets her wrist go. Alex holds it. Her breath comes out in thick, hot gasps and the burn of a pseudo-fever broils in her neck. She holds her chest, feels the violent vibrations of her ribs. Clarissa watches her. “What was I saying?”

“What?”

“Or yelling. I don't know. Did you understand anything?”

Clarissa's eyes narrow at her. Alex tries to remember but—it’s slipped already, all of it, the dream, the colors, and she blinks at Clarissa and feels the cold of the hole in the wall of her own memory.

She feels violated. Skin to bone. Bone to soul.

“Some stupid nursery rhyme,” Clarissa says dismissively and yet (and yet) she looks away sharply. “Can you not be so weird?”

“...sorry?”

“ _Yeah_ —contrary to popular belief, that doesn't fix crap.” She gets off of Alex's bed. “Spaz quieter next time.”

She turns off the light and pulls the door shut, plunging Alex into a realm of darkness with an itch in some deep, dark recess of her skull and something like a glitch at the corner of her eye. 

 

* * *

 

They have their bad days.

Alex stares slack-jawed at the menu. At all these weird, whimsical drinks with names that roll stumbling out of her tongue. The barista patiently watches her but somewhere in her peripheral, he's drumming his fingers in a rush.

They aren't though, when she glances down to try to catch them. His fingers are relaxed on the countertop. Something in her vision twitches.

Static.

She blinks. It's gone.

“Tall coffee. Black. No room for cream or sugar.”

The barista nods. Alex steps aside while she pays because she's probably held up the line long enough. A collective breath leaves the people filed up after her and there are looks of scorn, she's sure, but she isn't looking.

The next gentleman is considerably faster with placing an order. A little behind him someone whispers, “isn’t that your roommate?” and Alex turns around.

Clarissa's frowning at her in the line. She’s tall, too. Red hair, sneer, she’s hard to miss. Someone's with her, a short, thin girl with blonde hair and glasses and a gaze that's more weirded out than Clarissa's trademark pissed. “Yeah, it is.

“She’s weird. Don't mind her.”

Clarissa makes it a point to say this once she's side to side with Alex. Their eyes meet. As soon as the barista calls her name and hands her the coffee, Alex turns away, head ducked, frown cut deep. She saunters out of the café.

They live together now. For college. Splitting the dues to Clarissa's modest apartment out in lively, bustling New York, a year or two now together at most. Alex's parents deemed it well to reconnect with Clarissa when Alex decided she'd go out of state after graduation. They'd argued about it first, though.

_just because Michael wanted to move there doesn't mean you have to_

When you have two kids and you lose one, you never do treat the other the same again. Nothing is ever the same. Fear is a very real thing, borderline tangible and so is grief, heavy with all the broken pieces of what was supposed to be, concrete and cold and stifling. Alex had fought hard out of respect to not snap at her mom that there are no lakes in metropolitan New York.

They reached out to Clarissa anyway. Or her mom did, speaking through the phone in some forlorn familiarity, tiptoeing around old wounds threatening to crack open. Safer, her mom said, to be with someone they know. And Clarissa's technically family.

All those visits and noisy dinners and the muted, fleeting little sounds Alex used to hear her make from Michael's room.

New York wouldn't drown her. And even if it did, Clarissa knows how to swim. At least, that's what her mom believes.

Moving on is a slow, torturous process. It doesn't really help that for Clarissa, it's also hateful.

_it was your fault you killed Mike_

That confrontation never happened, Alex is sure, but she has vague imprints. Like some kind of dream. A distant past life.

It hardly matters that it never happened. Alex knows it's what Clarissa thinks.

She thinks it sometimes, too.

(If she tries hard enough, she can hear the yelling with so much clarity. Back and forth just shouting your fault you killed him all while the world pulsed under her eyeballs, the air salty and stale and prickly on the roof of her mouth. Ren had gawked at her. Nona was there. Jonas's face was inscrutable.

 _Jonas_.)

Jonas is still in Camena, in his attic, lumbering through state college. He'd only started this year, more than a year after their high school graduation. Alex really isn't in the right place to judge him on that. _She_ hasn't chosen a major yet.

Ren's in-state, too. Last she heard of him, he and Nona started dating. They don't talk much anymore. Having a girlfriend does that. College and stress do that.

College. Classes. _Class_. **Classroom**.

Her desk spasms with static just at the bottom. It's always the bottom or the very top or the corners, close enough to the edges that she can convince herself it's not real. She shakes her head. The boy next to her asks her, “you okay?” and she nods her head limply, not looking.

“Yeah. Didn't sleep well last night.”

He's still looking at her but she powers through, staring at the whiteboard and the teacher with purpose. She could never understand this teacher's handwriting. It looks like

static

and the notebook she has for this subject is still bare half a semester later. She gives up completely. She shuts it. 

 

 

“You're home early.”

“Yeah,” Clarissa grunts. She's seated on the couch with her head in her hands and a can of beer on the center table. “I’m not feeling well.”

“Headache? Fever?”

She hefts her head up but her eyes are closed, and Alex can see the strain on her face. Her laugh lines run deep. “I don't know. I feel nauseous.”

Alex fidgets like an idiot at the door. Clarissa finally opens her eyes, zeroes in on her there, and a light sneer twists her face. It's automatic. Like she's looking at something disgusting.

Alex is used to it. She unlimbers her bag and plops it on an end table. “Let me get you some Pepto-Bismol.”

Clarissa doesn't fight her on it. She must be feeling that ill.

The Pepto-Bismol is handed with an unopened bottle of water and Clarissa says nothing beyond a raspy _thanks_ but Alex won't push her luck. She sits at a distance, the next couch, watching as Clarissa knocks the tab back. Watching as Clarissa unscrews the bottle cap and brings the bottle to her mouth, precipitation dripping from the gaps between her fingers, throat rippling, lips wet.

With startling sharpness, the sensation of Clarissa crushing their mouths together fills her senses. Clarissa's neck is bent all wrong. Her mouth tastes like rot. Her tongue has lumps. It swirls around the inside of Alex's mouth, violating, skin to bone, bone to soul.

 _soul_. _**Souls**_. _Trapped_

Alex rips herself from the daydream with a gasp. Clarissa is staring at her like she's insane.

Or going insane. Maybe she is.

It's a very bad day.

“What?”

“Nothing.” Alex scrubs a hand down her face and closes her eyes.

“ _You are so fucking weird,_ ” Clarissa mutters and Alex can't find it in her to dispute that.

“Mom called,” she says instead. Clarissa doesn't act like she heard. Or that she cares, necessarily. For a moment. 

“What’d she say?”

“Jonas is coming over. Staying for a few days.” She watches Clarissa's reaction. Clarissa's never liked Jonas. Jonas the _step_ -brother, the _new_ brother, the one that came after _Michael_ but right now she doesn't really react. Does she feel that unwell? “For a break, I think. I talked to him after. I think he just wants to hang out.”

“Nona too,” Clarissa says at length. “And Ren. Her boyfriend. _Your_ friend. Ugh.” She flattens her face on her palms. “They better not do anything disrespectful in this house. I hate changing sheets.”

Alex almost smiles. “What for?”

“It’s Nona's birthday on Saturday. She wants to spend it with me.”

“I should call Ren then, he hasn't told me about that…” Clarissa's shoulders are twitching. Alex feels herself frown. “Hey. You okay?”

Clarissa seems to catch herself shuddering and rolls her shoulders, sneer-snapping, “I’m fine,” but she's blanched white. Alex drops it.

They sit in the quiet. The wall clock ticks. A car outside drags out its horn. Alex watches out for any more static in her vision and out of the blue, Clarissa barks, “ _what?_ ”

Alex blinks at her. “…what?”

“What did you say?” Clarissa demands, her jaw pulled taut. Her face is so, so pale. Her sneer isn't really there, she looks like she's about to vomit and her throat bobs in what Alex thinks is a too-deep swallow. “Did you say something?” she maintains.

Alex raises her hands in defense. Or to prepare to help Clarissa up to puke. Or... just something. “I… I didn't.”

Did she?

(A very, very bad day.)

Clarissa's hackles lower after a tense stretch of moment. Her eyes dart around like she's trapped

trapped. **Souls**. _Escape_. **_Not_** possible

and for a second, Alex swears they’re **red.**

“I’m gonna hurl,” Clarissa says now, eyes hazel and bleary, brown most times and green in the right light. Alex sees them green when Clarissa tilts her head and cups her mouth, and Alex gets to her feet to pull her up.

Clarissa fights it, for about two seconds. When she gags, she finally lets herself be let up.

“What did you eat? What did you _do?_ ”

Clarissa's arms shudder in Alex's hands. They still tense though, and the glare she throws loses its effect because of how sick she looks. A rivulet of sweat races from her temple to her jaw. “I didn't do anything.”

“Well you must've—”

“Stop trying to get me to–to _talk_ when I'm about to _vomit_ , Alex!”

Alex doesn't even get the chance to turn on the bathroom lights when Clarissa dry heaves again. She tears herself from Alex's grasp and stumbles to the toilet, limbs flailing in the dark. She vomits in the dark—the splashing, sloshing sound of expelled stomach contents echo in the dark.

In the split second between flicking the switch and the lights turning on, Alex thinks she sees the reflection of her eyes on the sink mirror are red.

“Clarissa—”

“Stay back,” Clarissa rasps, ducking further into the toilet. Her shoulders are raised. “I’m not done, I'm—”

She retches. Alex closes her eyes and looks away. Unfortunate that she could turn her  _ears_ away that easily. Retching. Heaving. Splash.

Clarissa calls for her when she's done. Or at least, Alex thinks so. The sound she makes is breathless and garbled and she's reaching for something without looking.

Tissues. Alex rips a few squares, kneels next to her, and rubs her back while handing them over. Other than a slight tension on her back, Clarissa doesn't react much else. She wipes herself off and keeps her head down. Alex is almost scared to see how her face

 _her_. Eyes

look once she glances up. Alex leans away a little. “…are you… um, okay?”

“Terrific. Sunshine and fucking rainbows,” Clarissa croaks. She nudges Alex's hand off of her back and flushes the toilet. Alex doesn't look at the swirling concoction of water and puke. “God, I have this shit taste in my mouth…”

“That would be the puke.”

“No, _genius_ , I just have this really shit taste in my mouth and…” Clarissa rocks back and sits on her haunches, hugging her chest. Her eyes close. “Jesus Christ, it's like there's something _inside_ of me or something, my stomach feels weird…”

Alex doesn't say anything. Clarissa opens her eyes and sees the look on Alex's face, and the vitriol on her tongue spills free: “I’m not pregnant or anything, if that's what you're thinking.”

“It’s not.” It is. Alex looks somewhere else. Clarissa's not popular without effort. There are parties, and people, and Michael's not here anymore, and—that’s _cold_ , Alexandra.

“Fuck, Alex— _forget it_.” Clarissa stands up. Alex attempts pursuit but Clarissa shakes her hand off when it flattens on her back. “ _Get_ —ugh, just don't. Alright? I'm just gonna sleep this off. I'll feel better in the morning.” Quieter, with her hand on her forehead and eyes closed, “I always do.”

Alex shuts up. By Clarissa's foot, she sees something like a shadow creeping up to her ankle but it's gone with a quick rip of static. Her head pounds.

“Yeah, me too,” she mumbles. “…feel better in the morning.”

(They always do.

Very, very bad days. **Very**. _Bad_.)

She stands up and squeezes past Clarissa on the doorway. There's a perfunctory contact—Clarissa’s bare arm on the sleeve of Alex's ( _Michael's_ ) jacket, and a glitch at the edge of her vision makes Alex turn and meet Clarissa's eyes. Hazel, still hazel, but something red is starting to seep out of her tear ducts. Alex is the first to look away.

“Can you be nice when Jonas gets here?” she asks without looking back.

“I’m always nice.”

“You sure are.”

Alex ambles to her room. Footfalls and a quick _fwip_ and click of a closing door tells her Clarissa has gone into hers, too, and with considerably less fanfare compared to how they usually separate at night. She hears Clarissa's muffled groan, the sound of something getting knocked over and falling, and then the resounding  _damn it._

“Night, Clarissa,” she calls out. 

“ _Ready or not, here I come, Alex_.”

—so close to her ear that she flinches and falls against a couch armrest, gasping and whimpering and clutching her chest. Clarissa isn't there. She's gone to her room, Alex. There's _no one_ there, Alex.

A bad day. A bad day. Alex runs to her room and locks her door. In the dark, something in the corner glitches.

College. Stress. Clarissa said it herself and Alex knows it. It'll always get better in the morning.

There are just really, really bad days.

She throws herself onto her bed and closes her eyes, burrowing under the duvet. Somewhere, _under_ somewhere, _in_ somewhere, her phone rings but she's not in the mood to play hide and seek. Even in the darkness behind her eyelids she thinks she sees the ripples.


	2. all of us, altogether now

New York is a city of colorful buildings and even more colorful people, with teenagers sporting wild, unapologetic hair and women with glutes that could crack skulls, running along like getting to work on time mattered more than the danger of tripping in their heels and breaking their necks. It probably does, considering the kind of place New York is. The kind of place the world can be in general.

Their place is in one of the quieter streets in northwest Bronx, at least. Quieter in that the most racket they get is a guy mashing his car horn in a road rage and the occasional nonsense of throwing hands in some drunken debate gone awry. They do have neighbors that party once in a while outside those, but Clarissa handles them fine. Her tongue's sharp in the way that says she has no time for your shit and _won't hesitate to call the cops if you don't turn it way down, I swear to God._

Furthermore, lying's not her style. She always marches there with her phone in her hand and thumb hovering above the 9.

Camena never gets this colorful, or this loud, this scandalous. Camena is close-knit families going to church on Sundays in station wagons and bland sights committed to memory. Alex thinks of a place across light-years when she thinks of Camena.

“I was pretty sure you'd turn into a… a total _party girl_ or something. That New York'd desecrate you or whatever,” Jonas tells her. He's leaned back on his chair, cigarette pinched between his fingers, looking every bit like a boy hurled from light-years away. Jetlagged. Sluggish. Disheveled.

“ _Desecrate_ , nice.”

“Yeah. Like _sacrilege_ , dude.” Jonas laughs under his breath and it comes out smoky. His lips are chapped. “This is like, big city living now, Alex. Man, I can't even remember the turns we took from the airport…”

“Maybe that has more to do with your noggin than New York, Jonas.”

“Oh ha- _ha_.”

“You're the one who always says that kinda thing, I'm just playing into it,” Alex says with a shrug. Jonas rolls his eyes and sulks but Alex laughs at him, and the corners of his lips twitch. “So… how is Camena?”

“Camena is... _Camena._ I mean. Fine, I guess? Still the way you left it anyway. It's not falling apart or anything so.”

Alex hums and scrunches her face through more cigarette smoke. “And State? How you liking State?”

“I don't know. It's high school but with way more school crap and chiller teachers. One bad offsetting the good.” Jonas shrugs. “So, _okay_ , I guess. I'm not falling behind or anything and dad’s happy about that.”

Alex nods. She cracks open another can of beer, Jonas lights another cigarette. Each to their own vices—Jonas’s gotten heavier on his, though. Alex imagines the patchwork his throat and lungs have become as he takes a deep drag. “Man, you should quit that,” she says with only half-feigned disapproval.

“No one's quitting anything. You're on your second beer.”

“My second beer in two weeks,” Alex corrects. Jonas scoffs. “How’s mom?”

“You tell me. Doesn't she call you like, every other day?”

Jonas's eyes have an amused little glint and Alex huffs. “Fair point.”

“Yeah, I can imagine that gets… bothersome after a while. Even dad keeps me on a short leash.”

“That’s what happens when people lose… _people_ , I guess.”

Jonas keeps quiet. He takes deep drags and Alex takes deep swigs, their eyes on the amber-tinted streetlight on the curb, the both of them pulling their heads out of where they shouldn't be, not right now, not somewhere deep and dark. This is the first time they're seeing each other again in months and it should be about more than grief. Jonas is the first to able to pull his head free. He speaks. “How’s Clarissa?”

Alex rolls her jaw. She leans back on her chair. “Still Clarissa.”

“Still possibly a bloodthirsty vampire masquerading as a spiteful young woman?”

“Yeah, but like—I mean, we're _cool_ , I guess? We don't, like…” Alex flails her hands in some vague gesture. Jonas doesn't seem to get it. Hence: “I don't know, lose our shit and stuff and go fully rabid on each other. We have… arguments. Sometimes I know why and sometimes I don't.”

“Sounds hard.”

“More… tedious, really. Like, you get used to it.”

Jonas makes a face. “You get used to someone hating your skin…” he muses and there's that tone of his that Alex hates but is fond of all the same: backhanded, subtle, so very Jonas. “I mean… yeah, sure, whatever. That's like, _really sad_ but you do you.”

“Shut up.”

“I’m just saying, you don't really have to live with her— _I know_ , I know your mom would pop a blood vessel or something if you don't,” he raises a hand to stop Alex when she bristles, “but, like, just be somewhere close and get your own place. Not like you don't have any cash of your own from part-time stuff and we wouldn't be willing to help you. Just… get that baggage off your back, y'know? _Clarissa the emergency contact_ , that's all. Your mom will probably get that. Let Clarissa be there when you fall down the stairs and break an arm and nowhere near you ‘til then.

“…or you could go to State, come back home,” he continues when Alex doesn't say anything. Alex snorts and shakes her head with blatant vehemence. “Or not, I guess.”

“Listen, Jonas, it's… it's cool.” Alex shrugs. Jonas makes a sound that essentially means he doesn't believe you, but also whatever, but _also_ you're still wrong. Alex socks him on the arm. “Quiet. Like… you know, this is a good enough arrangement as it is. I'm a couple minutes from university, I have someone to split the bills with, I'm learning to be an understanding, patient person—”

“Oh, patient, yeah, I can imagine.”

“Buddha himself will envy my patience. And I'm fine. Everything's fine. We're all a-okay.”

Jonas laughs and Alex smiles with him, sinking further in her seat. The street past the balcony fail is quiet save for the occasional car rumbling past and blasting tunes. The streetlight's amber crawls to the toes of Alex's shoes like coy, tickling fingers. She watches it, half-expecting the light to move. Jonas's lighter goes off again.

“Are we really, Alex?”

Jonas asks it so quietly, so uncertainly that Alex feels her face pinch in confusion. He's not looking at her when she turns to him. “What do you mean?”

“Like, _a-okay?_ ” He snorts like it's funny. Anxiety pricks Alex's insides. “Are we?”

“I don't… get what you mean here, Jonas, are we _not?_ Did I do something—”

“No,” he snaps. Doesn't mean to snap, and he looks apologetic when he pauses. “I mean… like… sometimes I just feel…”

Alex inches a little towards him and he eases away. Her frown deepens. “What?”

“It’s like… I'm going crazy sometimes. Do you ever get that feeling?” Jonas holds his head and rubs his forehead. All at once something like age, decades and light-years he isn't supposed to have, seem to catch up to him and he unravels, sagging and tired. The hair sticking out of his beanie looks so greasy to Alex, so suddenly. “I feel like I'm gonna… snap, or something.”

The unease in Alex's insides blooms full, tendrils crawling to her scalp and the tips of her fingers. She catches a shadow by Jonas's head whip but it's a trick of the light because when she blinks, it's stilled. “Is… something wrong? Is everything okay back home?”

Jonas doesn't answer right away. He closes his eyes. “Yeah— _yeah_. Just… _twenties crisis_ , I guess. My head hurts. There's like this pressure—”

“Where'd you put your meds?”

“I got 'em, I got 'em. Here.” He pats his jacket pocket and sighs. “Topamax. New ones. They don't work any better than the Neurontin though, and I think I'm starting to seriously piss off my doctor. Man, these chronic headaches…”

Alex frowns and reaches out to him and this time, he doesn't edge away. If anything he leans into the feeling of Alex's hand on his shoulder and when he turns, his smile is tight and his eyes look

**sunken**

but he nods at her in some wordless reassurance. “I wish you'd tell me what’s up,” she ventures, squeezing his shoulder.

Jonas laughs, a quick jet of air out of his nose. He shakes his head now and looks away. “Man, Alex, I wish I knew what _is_ up.” 

 

 

Alex opens her eyes to the darkness of her room and someone outside bumping into things and cursing. The glare of a street light splays on the wall by her foot like a shapeless menace. A Hiroshima shadow burned orange.

Jonas groans next to her. “ _The fuck?_ ” he slurs, and Alex shushes him to go back to sleep as she sits up, feeling for slippers by his futon. The blur of his shape is stained orange in the relative darkness and he regards Alex with heavy eyes. She waves her hand at him in dismissal.

“Go back to sleep. I’ll be a minute,” she murmurs, and she shuffles out of her room.

Clarissa's retained enough sense to find the light switch at least, because the living room's lit. Alex has to squint. Clarissa's standing with her elbow on the closest wall for balance while she fumbles for the clasp of her heels. The door is wrenched open behind her. She isn't a mess but she's unkempt, and Alex knows she doesn't let anyone catch her unkempt when her head's on straight.

Which she doesn’t, judging by the smell of alcohol that assaults Alex's nostrils once she's close enough. “You okay?” she asks Clarissa gingerly, not touching just yet.

Clarissa looks up and blinks. Her eyeliner's sweat-smeared and her lipstick is uneven. Unseeingly, she squints at Alex and the awed hope in her face makes Alex's chest tighten.

“Michael?”

Maybe Alex ought to start dyeing her hair again.

“No,” Alex says first, because Clarissa needs the wake up call and Alex needs to get herself away from the grief before she could fall into its abyss. It works: Clarissa's face screws. Alex prefers it that way. “Let me help you,” she says.

“I don't need your help,” Clarissa grunts, but when Alex kneels and unhooks the first of her heels with much more efficiency, she doesn't argue.

Clarissa holds the top of Alex's head for leverage while she kicks off her heels. Her fingers spread on Alex's scalp like the prongs of a star with all their length and alcohol-supernova heat, and it sometimes blows Alex's mind that this kind of intimacy only ever happens when one of them isn't feeling okay. Alex stands, and Clarissa falls into her. Involuntarily, Alex knows, but she _is_ drunk and Alex is here, so somehow, they both allow it.

“Whose shoes are these?” Clarissa slurs as Alex hefts her up, lifts her upright. Alex looks at the scuffed pair of sneakers by the door.

“Jonas’s.”

Clarissa laughs sharply. “Oh, good. _Jonas_ is here. The _family's_ all here. That is such–such a great thing to come home to.”

“Come on, Clarissa.”

“So how _is_ Jonas? Does he enjoy being–being the replacement brother yet?”

“Clarissa—”

“I’m right here,” Jonas announces tonelessly. Alex turns, spots him standing at her doorway groggy and slouching, and grimaces a quiet plea. Her hands tighten around Clarissa. _Not right now, please._

He must get it. Either that or he's just exhausted, because when Clarissa slurs, “you sure are, Jonas, you definitely are,” he has nothing to say.

“Close the door, will you?” Alex tells him as she urges Clarissa forward. Clarissa grunts. Her hand on Alex's neck burns a sun spot. Jonas doesn't speak a word, but he hobbles toward the door.

Alex knows better than to turn on the light in Clarissa's room. Her eyes hurt, and Clarissa is groaning, sinking heavier and heavier by the minute, hand on the back of Alex's neck loose and the other limp. “Hold—can you like, _hold on,_ ” Alex huffs, and Clarissa laughs her condescending little laugh.

“That’s what I've been doing, genius.”

It's the right response, but somehow Alex knows Clarissa means it differently.

Clarissa flops on her bed. Alex steps on another pair of heels and what feels like a textbook as she hobbles closer. “It’s hot,” Clarissa murmurs, and Alex sighs.

“I know.”

She pulls Clarissa's jacket first, nails digging into the pads, turning Clarissa over to easier slip it off. Clarissa doesn't say much but she grunts. Grumbles when Alex tells her to sit up so she could yank the sweater off, too. New York is skirting past a cold spell and layers, see, layers are a must.

But Clarissa's only put on two, and Alex's face burns when she sees a bra instead of an undershirt. She averts her eyes. Clarissa says something about her jeans but to Alex, the jacket and sweater off are fine, and she starts moving away.

(In a distant, distant nook in her brain, Michael's lips twisting into a knowing little smile is shelved away. Alex had pretended the weather was too hot and her cheek was itchy to excuse the flush, to cover her face. But Michael, he's smart. Smarter than her. Smarter than Alex liked to believe.

“Yeah,” he said smilingly. “Too hot, you're right.”

And Clarissa had bounded toward them in a bikini printed with tiny stars and laughed with them about seashells she'd picked up.

Alex had wondered if Michael ever saw her looking at other girls, too.)

“It’s hard.”

Alex turns to Clarissa slowly. Clarissa's left the jeans on and is twisted away from Alex, curled into a ball, making herself as small as possible. Her back is tight with tension. Her shoulder is splashed with freckles, haphazard like pieces of broken bottles and stars losing to light pollution. “I know,” Alex whispers. She closes Clarissa's door and cranks the thermostat a little lower before going back to her room.

Jonas is up, head propped upright on pillows, two of which are Alex's best ones. He doesn't look up from his phone. “I really don't know how you do it.”

“That… doesn't happen always,” Alex says as she crawls to her bed. “It’s college, I'd be worried if there weren't parties once in a while…”

Jonas snorts. “I meant live with _that_.” He jerks his chin at the door. “I don't know how you do it.”

Alex stays quiet. Jonas doesn't get the chance to say more because she reaches down and snatches back her pillows from right under his head.

“Hey!”

“Night, smarty-pants.” 

 

* * *

 

Jonas is awakened by one-two whacks of a pillow. He groans, with feeling, and tries swatting at Alex in defense. Unlike him, Alex has her eyes open and leans away from his hand easily. He’s still too sleepy-stupid to realize he isn’t hitting anything. “Wake up,” she says.

“Is the apartment burning?” Jonas asks groggily. His eyes are still closed. He's tangled himself comfortably in Alex's extra blanket and his toes knead the futon almost absentmindedly.

“Uh, no?”

“Then _holy shit_ , go die,” he groans. He makes to bury his face in a pillow again but Alex whacks him again, and this time he snarls. “Fuck you, Alex. Seriously, piss off. I came here for a break and none of dad’s wake up calls.”

Alex huffs and hits him with the pillow one more time. Jonas growls, for sure, but he sits up and looks sleepily at her with his hand scratching his dangly bits, right between the legs. “Ew,” Alex intones, and he scoffs at her. “We got guests, dude. Come on. Get up. And there's breakfast.”

“Guests?” Jonas grouches. He gets up, though. Sunlight is streaming in through Alex's open window and she watches his face crumple up like paper balled at the center as he turns away from the light. He rubs his bedhead, makes an even bigger mess of it. “You snore, just so you know. You sound like a dying elephant. It's gross.”

“You fart in your sleep,” Alex counters. Outside, the humdrum voices of people leak in through the gaps of the door and thin plaster. Jonas must hear this time because he blinks, and he rubs his eyes free of grit to get them to open wider.

“Is that…?”

“Mhm.”

He sighs, says, “oh, Jesus Christ,” like this is such a drag, but Alex knows better than that.

Nona’s voice is the first to break through them both as they step outside. Relaying some story about a classmate in Boston and there’s coffee involved and lack of sleep. Ren pipes up like the pot-addled golden retriever that he is as soon as he sees Jonas. “Jonas!” he hoots with a pump of his brows and Jonas snickers through dry spittle and morning sour. Nona pauses her anecdote to look to Jonas with polite regard.

“Yeah, yeah, we see each other at State all the time, pothead.”

“Still with the pothead. Super original. And it isn't _all_ the time, sheesh. Just a couple times a week.”

“It is if you're me, and you're _you_.”

Alex doesn't stick around for the bickering. She looks at the kitchen and the meal counter, and Clarissa's eyes dart away from her just in time. It may be just another trick of the light. She's never sure anymore.

Granted, it's been days since her last bad episode. She's been taking it easy. Treading lightly around stress, avoiding anything that as much breathes the threat of a headache. Still. You get used to things. You build a routine and mindset around things. She scrubs her face in some irrational thought that it would also scrub her brain. Nona's staring at her with a small smile when she looks there again, perched on the counter with untouched breakfast and… Clarissa. That would explain why the breakfast is untouched in the first place.

She waves Alex over and Alex sees Clarissa's shoulders twitch. Nona, if she notices, certainly doesn't seem to think anything of it.

“Hey, Alex,” she greets cordially when Alex comes up. Clarissa's stirring her cup of coffee with determination. She looks pissed more than hungover but then—what is even the difference. Better yet, what's new. “There goes Ren…”

“And Jonas,” Alex says with a weak smile.

“Mm. I never know whether they're just… bros being bros or they're _really_ about to throw down.”

“Yeah, I got this… _Hey!_ ” Alex barks at them. Ren pauses like a pet caught in the treats bag. Jonas finishes whatever nonsensical jab ( _resident burnout, that's you_ ) before turning at attention too. Alex quirks her brows at them and tips her head toward the counter. “Quit it. It's breakfast time.”

“Yes, mom.”

“Leave it to my sister to be not chill.”

Clarissa coughs under her breath. Sister, Alex hears, leaking with disdain. Alex pushes past it. “You guys, um… settled in yet?”

“Mm, yeah. We got our bags up in Clarissa's room since Jonas looks to be squatting in yours,” Nona supplies. Ren pulls up a stool next to her. Jonas, caught in a choiceless situation, takes the one free spot next to Alex. And Clarissa.

Clarissa stiffens by proxy, but says nothing.

“Uh, yeah, sorry about that I guess. Ren could still… y'know.” Alex turns to Ren with a shrug. “If you want to bunk with me.”

“Better yet, let the boys bunk together and you uh… sleep with us instead,” Nona suggests. Ren makes a scandaled sound.

“No— _no_. This is fine. I have separation anxiety and I'd very much like to spend our time not being states apart not… _being apart_ , you get me?”

Jonas snickers through a mouthful of omelette. “Wow.”

“Besides, you throw them in one room together and one of them's gonna end up maimed,” Alex quips. Nona smothers her chuckle with a sip of coffee. Ren snickers, murmurs _yeah, and it ain't gonna be me._

Clarissa hasn't spoken a word. It's like waiting around the ticking of a time bomb. With all five of them together like this, somehow, the anxiety is even more stifling. More casualties in the blast.

“Anyway,” Ren drawls when it gets too quiet. Nona raises a brow at him. Alex pokes her omelette around. “Here we are, huh? All together. Like, _really_ together. I don't think we've—all uh, five of us—actually hung out like, as in, _together_ , and this is nice, you know? A whole new experience. So—Alex, have you met my girlfriend?”

“Uh… yeah, Ren, I have. We—”

“Excellent! And it's her birthday come tomorrow, and with all of us here it's gonna be epic!” Ren brandishes his utensil like a flag. “A whole buttload of epic. We're in New York! City of color. Literally. Never seen so many colored people in one place before. All shape and sizes—”

“Epic. Together. Birthday bash. We get it, Reginald,” Clarissa grouses. Ren's jaws shut with a near audible click. Nona's eyes lift from her coffee. Jonas hunkers lower into his meal. “Yeah—hurray, _yeah_ , best weekend ever. _Happy birthday, Nona_. We're gonna get shitfaced.”

Nona, despite it all, smiles. She's more used to Clarissa than all of them combined. More in tuned. More—patient, probably. More than even Alex. “E-yep.” She pops the consonants. “Shitfaced, all of us, altogether. It should be pretty wicked.”

Ren recovers from the snap with a goofy grin. Jonas keeps inhaling his food like he wants to disappear with it. Nona keeps at it with the coffee. And Alex, _Alex_ , turns her head just in time to catch Clarissa's eyes on her. Sharp, spiteful, like Alex is some prop or a road block. An inconvenience. Something she'd really prefer not be here.

But, here they are, together, and when she blinks a corner of her vision warps and glitches. Somewhere in her peripheral she catches a glimpse of red.

Trick of the light. She had a dreamless sleep. She tears her eyes from Clarissa and looks down at her cup of coffee. Her reflection stares back at her uncertain. The apartment feels way too

full. Too **_many_**. **Complete**. _Together_ **again**

crowded already and Alex swallows down the anxiety with a mouthful of omelette she doesn't chew.


	3. (we have to) go back

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the slowest burn

Alex closes her eyes against the lights. There's red (there's always red **red** _**red**_ ) but there's blue too, and green, and a migraine kind of lilac that makes her eyes pound like miniature drums.

She's dizzy now. From the shots, the reckless energy around them, the lights: all three. At the bottom of her vision a glitching won't go away like some mocking, stagnant sea. Her fingers itch. The static twitches like it's alive.

The whole club feels like it's alive. With all its music and dancing people and the very real, very irrational anxiety threatening to break her spine in half. Dread crawls up her throat in tendrils, unshakeable, unreasonable, like something's not right, because

 **everything**. _Feels_ alive

“He's taking too long, don't you guys think?” she asks idly. Her knee is bouncing. Ren is baked out of his mind and only blinks like an idiot. Nona purses her lips mid-sentence to regard Alex politely, albeit exasperatedly. Clarissa just looks annoyed at the interruption.

“He’s old enough. He can take care of himself,” she says. Shouts, really, above the music.

“It’s—this–this is New York, he might get lost—”

“This is a club. Not even Jonas is so stupid to go out and go wandering in a city he doesn't know squat about. Besides, he only said restroom so like, chill out.”

“Relax, Alex, okay? Fine, if he doesn't turn up in,” Nona checks her watch, “fifteen minutes, we'll look for him.”

Alex winces but nods. Next to Nona, Ren groans, and Nona frowns at him. “He okay?” Alex asks— _shouts_ , not like she means to. It's loud in here. Nona nods quietly. Ren feels for Nona's wrist and squeezes it, tight like a lifeline even to Alex's eyes as his own close and his mouth falls slack. He's been using way too much, even for him. Way more than Alex remembers from high school.

Issues, she remembers him telling her one time on Skype when the topic of his recreational medicating came up. _Just some stuff I'm slugging through, Alex, it's no big._

He's a lot thinner, too. Alex is only noticing now with the way he's sprawled like an awkward skeleton. Nona tries shaking him awake but he's slipped away again.

“Is that still okay?” Alex asks Nona. “Should he be using that much? Should he be out like that?”

Nona's been cordial since this morning but now when she looks at Alex, her expression is pinched. “He’s cool, Alex.” Underneath that, the unspoken, _we're cool_. Even further under that, _mind your own business._

Alex backs off. Ren's her friend, not necessarily Nona. She doesn't know how Nona works but even Clarissa frowns at the response so backing off—best course of action.

Static bursts somewhere on Alex's left and she turns on instinct, squinting at the torrid display on the dancefloor. Tens and tens of bodies just rocking to some scattered beat that makes her teeth grind and head hurt, shrouded in wild, technicolor lights that make the whole scene look otherworldly, straight out of a mercurial fever dream.

There's a shape on the center of the floor. It's taller than everyone else there, elongated head sticking out like a thumb. Its shoulders are hunched. Alex can't see where its arms end, or if they even end at all. The lights seem to flicker right through it and only does Alex realize that it's supposed to have eyes when it opens them: **red.**

She blinks. There's only a girl there now when she looks closer, and she grins at Alex like a predator baring teeth. Alex's mouth is dry and she shuts her jaw with force, looking away. Has she been staring?

“I have to…” She waves lousily, a gesture she isn't even sure what means. Clarissa stares at her. Nona is too busy fretting over Ren to mind her as she scrambles away.

She bursts into the women's restroom and darts straight for the nearest sink. She splashes her face with water. Wets her hair and neck. Shuts her eyes until she can stop shaking. She doesn't vomit, though, because that's Clarissa's thing.

( _something_. **Inside** )

She opens her eyes to crippling static, only the top of her head visible on the mirror as she blinks. Her fingers itch, twitch, quake. Her breathing gets erratic. Behind her ear someone whispers in a strange multitude of voices ( _together **again**_ ) and she whips around to push them away.

It's just a girl, though, gawking at her, hands up in defense. “Whoa, hey. Jumpy much? Looks like you had a little too much up the nose there.”

Alex blinks. The static dissipates. She shakes her head, mumbles, “I don't–don’t do that kinda stuff,” and the girl smirks at her like sure, whatever.

“Saw you looking at me,” the girl says coolly. She rests her hip on Alex's sink and Alex is too disoriented to step back when she reaches forward. Her mouth opens and Alex watches it wrap around words that don't match.

“ _ **Together**_. _Again_.”

Alex shakes her head, groans, “what?” and the girl looks every bit of patient as she is pretty. She squeezes Alex's bicep with meaning.

“You took way too much of whatever, didn't you?” she titters with condescending fascination. She laughs, and briefly Alex thinks she sees nothing but darkness In her mouth. “But listen, that's cool. I think you're cute, too. Wanna… hijack a stall?”

Even feeling like this, Alex knows what that means. “I–I’m not—”

“I highly doubt that,” the girl says sweetly. Another squeeze. A quiet rumble in Alex's ears that makes her blink too quickly, breathe too rapidly. Sweat pools at the back of her neck and she slurs _no no no wait_ as the girl turns her around to start pulling her toward the stalls.

“Hold on, _wait_ —”

“Relax, honey, you'll be okay.”

Alex couldn't fight. Her limbs slack and her head swims, dunked lower and lower into a sea of static. She hears a stall door slam. She hears a lock. She hears a voice that is not the girl's even when it’s her mouth that moves around the words.

“Together. _Again_. **There** is **_no. End_**.”

“I don't understand…” she croaks, and the girl looks at her funny but still smiles.

“Wow, you're a weird one,” the girl purrs, pushing Alex up against the stall door. It rattles. “Good thing you're cute.”

Alex shakes her head. Even with her constant _wait no, no wait_ the girl tracks her mouth up Alex's neck—even when Alex doesn't want to her thighs quiver and her breaths simmer shallow. “Easy,” the girl rasps into her ear. The sound of a loosening belt buckle is unmistakable. On the stained bathroom wall behind the girl, Alex sees a disconnected shadow and static all around her vision.

“ _Stop_ ,” she says too loudly, belted out like a cough. The girl freezes. On Alex's back, the stall door jerks and the voice on the other side makes her lungs hitch.

“ _Alex? Alex is that you?_ ”

The girl blinks owlishly at her and mouths, _you?_ while the stall door rattles again and again. “ _Alex? Okay, dude, not cool. I heard you. What's going on?_ ”

The girl doesn't have the time to react properly: Alex spins around to unlock the stall door and goes stumbling into— _Clarissa_ , getting a faceful of shoulder and mouthful of fabric. Clarissa tilts backward with the force but otherwise holds her. Holds her, surprisingly enough. Alex realizes too late that there's a girl in there, with her, and looks up to find her and Clarissa having a stare down.

She rips herself away from Clarissa. Her heart pounds in her chest.

“Alex?”

“Sorry,” the girl says flatly with raised hands, not sounding very sorry, really. Clarissa’s face is inscrutable. “I didn't realize she had a—”

“She isn't—I’m not—” Alex tries, and when she cuts herself off the both of them turn heads to look directly at her. Her head hurts now. Looking at Clarissa, she realizes how badly she wants to just

 **vomit**. _Purge_. **The _thing_**. Inside

Clarissa's complexion is sickly in the bathroom's dull luminescence. Alex wants to vomit. She turns around and runs away from the sounds of Clarissa calling her back.

 

 

Clarissa finds her voiding her stomach contents by some dumpsters behind the club about five minutes later. Alex would've bristled, maybe made another grand escape if not for the next round of retching that scratches her throat and demands her full attention.

Her puke is this pallid brownish color of the day's lunch and liquid with so much alcohol. It splashes up against the tips of her shoes yet still, Clarissa stands close to her to rub firm circles on her back. Clarissa’s wearing open-toed sandals. Brown glop splashes and dots her pedicure. She doesn't say anything.

They both don't, until Alex is done and can think beyond the pounding of her head. Had she really drank so much?

“Listen…” A spangled string of drool and fluid hangs off the corner of her mouth. She wipes it with the back of her hand much to Clarissa's groaning chagrin. “What–what you saw in there, that, I didn't know her, she—”

“I don't care.” And to Clarissa's credit, she really sounds like she doesn't. Alex doesn't know how to feel about that. “Do you still smoke?”

Alex turns to Clarissa and blinks, bleary-eyed at the proffered cigarette carton. Clarissa already has one in her mouth. It's hard not to stare at it—her mouth, that is.

Sitting with her at the curb and just watching cars pass and people stumble out of the club drunk is a good distraction, though. Alex tries not to cough too much to not seem any more uncool.

Clarissa looks like she can tell that Alex feels like coughing anyway. She rolls her eyes.

“Look,” she says, voice as strained as the look on her face, “I don't care if–if you're gay, or whatever. That's your business.”

“I’m not.”

“Save it.” She sounds like she can't decide between grunting and laughing so she does this weird combination of both. “I’m not stupid. Neither was Michael.”

Not a good branch of conversation. Alex lets the moment drop to nothing and just stares at the embers of her cigarette. She pretends not to know Clarissa is watching her take a deep drag.

“You’re my responsibility, though. So if you could just _not_ run off and get yourself into shit situations like that again, that'd be great.”

“ _Your_ responsibility?”

“ _My_ responsibility. Your mom, for whatever godforsaken reason, dumped you with me and now if anything happens to you I'm gonna have to answer to her, you get that?”

“It’s not like I want this either,” Alex retorts—not quite a retort, though. It lacks the fire. It just sounds stupid and sad tumbling out of her mouth and she grits her teeth to make up for it. 

“What are we even doing here?”

“It’s Nona's birthday,” Alex says numbly. Clarissa stares at her like that's not what she meant, no, Alex knows what she meant, but they both let it slide. They're good at that. Walking around things, prodding a loose tooth but never really pulling it out. 

(Lest it hurt too much.) 

“For all our good times, this is a pretty shit birthday party.”

“Tell that to Nona.”

“I intend to,” Clarissa mutters. Smoke crawls out of her mouth in thin tendrils and Alex is drunk enough to try to discern the shapes of them, watch the puckering curves of Clarissa's mouth as she forms them. Somewhere, Michael is tilting her head at her in that knowing, patient way of his. Whispering some smartass quip laced with the formaldehyde stench of his breath.

“I’m gonna vomit.”

“Ugh.” But Clarissa moves. She picks herself up and throws her unfinished cigarette away to haul Alex to her feet. “I just had my toenails done.”

“Brown puke looks good on your toenails, actually.”

“Shut up.”

Clarissa stays at Alex's side by the dumpsters again and runs the heel of her hand in slow circles on Alex's back. Jonas finds them like that eventually. Alex sees the blurred shape of him through the surge of water gathering at her eyes but couldn't quite speak because her chest is bucking. She heaves.

“I got her. Get inside and tell them we're leaving,” she hears Clarissa say. Even with the sound of her retching and the gross splats of her vomit, she could make out the scruff of Jonas's shoes as he shuffles off. 

 

* * *

 

“Truth or slap, Alex.”

Alex lifts her chin off her chest to blink lazily at Ren. His smile is the telltale curve of far too much energy after a jarring high and a buzzing kind of unrest. Everyone else just looks tired from the club.

“Ren, I wanna go to bed.”

“Oh come on! It's only 11:30! And besides we gotta—we have to plow into Nona's birthday with a bang, right? Only half an hour left. Don't be such a buzzkill! Where's your energy? Your youth?”

“Granny Alex,” Jonas drawls somewhere at her side. She grunts and whips her arm to sock him somewhere—she hits his chest and he wheezes.

“Christ—!”

“Truth or slap, dude,” Ren insists, leaning forward to claw his knees, eyes near-bulging out of their sockets. He sits cross-legged on the carpets and his toes keep flexing with all his misplaced energy, just dying to get into somewhere and explode unbidden. Nona's eyes are half-closed, one leg slung over Ren's lap. Her face is still drunk-flushed.

“Ren—”

“Just go with it, Alex, so we can all go to bed and call this the best birthday party ever.”

Clarissa's voice is muffled by the hand smushing her face. Jonas shifts a little on reflex. Alex just swallows.

“Fine.”

All of Ren's lashing energy concentrates on the rapid fire of his mouth. “So—uh-huh, _so_ , is living with Clarissa everything you thought it would be?”

“Everything I thought it'd be—”

“Yes.” Ren leans in a little more and he looks almost impatient. His toes are tensed. “Like, is it stressful? Absolutely dreadful? Horrendous? Like living with your own personal villain—”

“Watch it, Reginald.”

“Nosferatu?” Ren flares his hands and waggles his eyebrows. Alex actually can't help her laugh, even when Clarissa starts cussing at Ren and demanding he get out of their apartment. Nona's eyes have fully opened, glinting with intoxication and mirth.

“It’s not so bad—”

“Slap her,” Jonas says immediately.

“ _Not so bad,_ ” Alex maintains. A glance to Clarissa tells her Clarissa's brow is quirked, arms crossed over her chest, jaw tense. “We’re older now, aren't we, we're better than… y'know.”

“Slap her,” Jonas says again.

“Okay, you all need to get the hell out of my apartment,” Clarissa barks.

Nona snorts unceremoniously. Ren's laugh is high-pitched and is like everything about him right now. Too much, too loud—going everywhere and nowhere all at once. Alex excuses herself to the balcony before she could get swept up and annihilated by the intensity of his energy.

It hardly matters, though, because he ends up there minutes later with his shoulders bunched close to his neck with the cold. She blinks at him in question. His eyes are darting everywhere. He doesn't see it.

“Hey,” Alex says cautiously, and Ren's eyes snap so quickly to her she wonders if you could get nerve damage from that kind of thing. “Everything okay?”

“Yeah– _yeah_. Peachy-keen. Damn it's cold. Should it really be this cold this time of year?”

“Cold spell, kind of. It's gonna be a week on Monday.”

“Sounds fake.” Alex opens her mouth but Ren's eyes are flicking everywhere again so he doesn't see. “I wanna talk to you. Been meaning to talk to you. I can't—I didn't know how to bring it up on Skype. And Nona was always there so—”

“What about?”

“She doesn't get it.” And Ren rounds on her. His eyes are brown and desperate. For a second they catch light and look a little closer to red. “I’m—she thinks I'm going crazy, Alex, but I don't wanna go back to a therapist. I'm not crazy. They'll lock me up. I don't wanna—I don't wanna get locked up—”

“What are you talking about?” Ren's mouth snaps shut. Alex feels something like a pulse on her throat and she lifts her hand to try to reach out, but Ren's eyes have focused on her and—she’s _scared_ to touch him. “Ren, what do you mean?”

“No, it's not—I think I'm just tripping—”

“Ren.”

Ren goes quiet. His shoulders are still bunched up and his body is still jittering with energy, but his eyes are focused on her. Desperation. A little bit of red.

“I have bad dreams,” he says. Alex unconsciously inches closer because he's whispering. His lip wobbles. “I–I see the ocean. I'm—it’s like I'm there but not really. It's like my body's there but _I'm_ not, but I see the ocean.”

Alex fumbles for words. Her hand still hovers on the space between them. “I—they’re just dreams, they won't hurt you.”

“But they do.” And he sounds like he's pleading, and Alex's chest clenches. “It’s–it’s the ocean, Alex. It talks. It–it’s the island, and—”

“Island?”

“Do you remember?” Hopeful, a little bit. He edges close and Alex's hand, lifted to reach out, tenses and gestures to stop him. He doesn’t see. “Do you see it, too? We went there, didn't we? I'm not crazy?”

“Ren, what island—”

“Edwards Island.” Angry. Impatient. “We went there. You and me, all five of us. We went there. I remember—I see it, I see us there.”

Alex chances a glance at the balcony door. Through the glass there's Jonas, sitting on a couch in the living room, fiddling with his phone. Clarissa's drinking from her water bottle in the kitchen. They'd hear her, maybe, if she called out. Ren grabs her bicep and she flinches.

“Tell me I'm not crazy,” he murmurs, eyes so wide ( _ **and**_ _for_ a **second** _red_.) He isn't blinking. “Tell me you remember, too. Nona doesn't believe me.”

Alex's mouth opens but comes up empty. Her eyes dart to the balcony door again. Clarissa's moved out of sight. Jonas has leaned back and Alex can only see his feet on the coffee table. “I— _Ren_ ,” she manages, summoning bravery, willing herself to be there for her best friend. Her hand still hovers, though, defensive. “Tell me how I can help.”

Ren's face twitches. A muscle spasms on his jaw. “You don't believe me.”

“Ren, how can we help—”

“We went there,” he says, resolute, determination to anger, hope to fear. “We went there. I see it. I remember. We have to go back.”

“Ren—”

“We have to go back,” he says again and Alex hears with his own a strange multitude of other voices: Ren speaking from everywhere and she's trapped in his tunnel, echoing and going and gone. Her head pounds. Her eyeballs pulse and feel like they're going to explode in her skull. Ren's face distorts with anger. With static. “It doesn't end. We have to go back.”

“Stop hurting me, Ren,” Alex says breathlessly. Ren's face slacks and he looks down at his hand, fingers wrapped around Alex's arm so tightly that they shake. He snatches his hand back and backs away, eyes wide and apologetic.

“But we went there.” His voice cracks. Alex feels herself swallow but couldn't will herself to step forward. “We went there. I'm not crazy, we went there!”

“Ren.” Alex swallows again and licks her lips. Ren is looking at her neck, or her shoulders, just not her face. Not into her eyes. “Ren, they're just bad dreams. I think you need to—”

“We went there.”

“We didn't,” Alex says, and Ren looks almost hurt by the answer. “Look. Clarissa and Nona did, remember? But _we_ didn't. You and me and Jonas, _we_ went back home. We haven't been there in–in years. I haven’t been there since… since Michael...”

“We. Went. There.”

“You need to go back to therapy. You just—you need someone to talk to about this. Someone… someone who knows what they're doing, okay?” Ren won't look at her. When she advances, he backs away. “You’re just… you're just sick, Ren.”

The street light on the curb flickers and in that blink of semi-darkness, Alex thinks she sees Ren's eyes burn **red.**

“I remember,” he whispers. So quietly it may as well be a cold spell breeze out of his mouth. “I can't—keep the dreams away anymore. I'm always. _High_.”

“I can help you find a therapist, okay? I'll talk to Nona. We'll help you.”

“No.” Ren shakes his head. Looks her in the eye just for a second before turning away sharply. “I can handle it. Just—don’t talk about this to anyone, Alex.”

“Hey—”

“ _Don’t_ , okay?” he asks. Pleads, really. He's already halfway out of the balcony and her fingers are blanched on the balcony door jamb. Alex grits her teeth. Ren doesn't leave until she nods her head.

She can still feel his grip around his arm when she steps back inside at long past 1 in the morning. Can still feel the cold of his fingers and the worry bubbling thick in the hollow of her throat. The lights in the living room are off. A sliver of light escapes the gap at the bottom of the bathroom door. She thinks she can hear someone breathing.

She's changed into sweats and a loose shirt when the knock on her door comes. Jonas's futon isn't laid out yet. “Were you taking a dump or something?” she quips wearily, pulling the door open.

She has to blink a couple of times to convince herself it's really Clarissa standing there. Her arms are around herself. She hasn't changed yet. She looks every bit of the person who wants to be anywhere but at Alex's door.

“Nona and Ren locked me out,” she bites out, looking straight at Alex. Her feet scruff on the carpets.

Alex scratches her thumbnail on the doorknob. “Well...”

“Your _brother's_ on the couch.”

They stare at each other for a long while, what feels like years bunched up in four seconds, maybe five. When Alex steps aside, Clarissa looks like she'll change her mind and bolt with her pride.

But she steps inside, and Alex rubs sweat off her palms onto her sweats after she closes the door. “There’s a futon,” she says, trying to be helpful, and Clarissa gives her a withering look but fishes for it under Alex's bed anyway.

Clarissa's tired, though, and her face keeps scrunching as she gets to setting the futon and the beddings. Her elbows are shaking. It's 1 in the morning. They're probably still a little bit drunk and just—goddamn tired. She's still trying to pull the whole damn thing out when Alex surrenders and sighs, “you can just—whatever, get up here.”

Clarissa stops. Folded futon half out from under the bed, she looks up at Alex with an inscrutable expression. Alex's neck is hot. It gets hotter because Clarissa actually looks to be considering it.

“Futon’s good,” Clarissa says at length, grit out, squeezed out of grinding gears. “Wouldn’t want to impose.”

The heavy _fwips_ of futon and beddings punctuate Clarissa's response, and Alex's exasperated flop on her own bed. Clarissa is the one to turn off the light.

It's when everything has stilled and the sheen of amber light by Alex's feet becomes boring that she speaks into the darkness. “Do you remember Edwards Island?”

A beat of silence. A wary, “yeah.”

“Remember when we were supposed to… have this dumb party there? The one Ren tried to organize?”

A longer beat of silence. A blank, “sure do.”

“Right. We… never went there, did we?”

“No.” Clarissa sounds confused. And strangely agitated. She shifts: Alex hears the scrapes of her beddings below. “Left Nona and me there.”

“Right.”

“I’m not going back there.”

Alex wants to look at Clarissa. That'll involve dangling her head off the edge of her bed, though, and that's just weird. She thinks of the beach. She thinks of sun and pretty girls in bikinis. She thinks of Michael and his wise, sunspot grin. “Yeah. Me too.” Clarissa says nothing. Alex clears her throat. “Ren mentioned it.”

“Mm.”

“Said…” _Don't talk about this to anyone._ “Said something about all five of us being there.”

“Yeah, no offense, your best friend isn't the most put-together person in the world. _Don't know what Nona sees in him…_ ”

“He just has… issues.”

Clarissa scoffs. “Don’t we all.”

Alex purses her lips. A glitch blocks out half of her vision for the briefest moment when she blinks. Below, Clarissa makes a sound suspiciously like a heave behind closed lips and she grumbles, says _sorry, yeah, just tasted something in my mouth…_

Issues. Don't they all. “I think I have to talk to Nona.” 

Clarissa pauses. She sighs, and the scrape of her beddings distracts Alex again. “Whatever.” 

Alex keeps blinking into the darkness until she falls asleep. 

(In her slumber she's shown the sea, and Ren, and shadowy people behind Ren, telling her they have to go back. 

In her dreams Clarissa is bent in awkward angles and Jonas is twitching, and Nona is watching her with red eyes. In her dreams she reaches out with both hands to the ocean, wanting to go back.) 

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading :')


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